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A review by dreams_of_attolia
The Lost Sun by Tessa Gratton
3.0
I wasn't super engrossed in the story at first, but it ended up getting more interesting. The aspect I ended up enjoying the most was the way the gods play a very long game and manipulate situations in complicated ways to twist the strands of fate towards the outcomes they desire. That felt very true to Norse mythology to me, and is the characteristic that makes Norse mythology so fascinating, regardless of which versions of the stories are being told.
It helps to think of this story as taking place in an alternate universe rather than in an alternate history version of this universe. If you think of it the second way, a lot of things don't make sense and it's distracting. For example, I'm willing to go with the "vikings settled North America instead of other European cultures" thing, but it was annoying the way that the political geography (cities, states etc.) of the US was pretty much the same, with even similar-sounding (but oddly-spelled) names (like Nebrasge instead of Nebraska). This was probably done as an expedient to help the reader understand the locations of things as the characters progress along their road trip, but it kept throwing me out of the story because it is so improbable. Other aspects of the culture that are old-school Norse don't make sense to me either, because this is supposed to be modern times. Modern day Scandinavians don't do this stuff, so why would modern North Americans just because they are descended from the Norse? I had to keep reminding myself just to think about it like a random alternate universe that just is, rather than an alternate history version of this universe. And given that in this world the Norse gods and trolls and such are real, the alternate universe is probably how Tessa Gratton intended this world to be interpreted.
It helps to think of this story as taking place in an alternate universe rather than in an alternate history version of this universe. If you think of it the second way, a lot of things don't make sense and it's distracting. For example, I'm willing to go with the "vikings settled North America instead of other European cultures" thing, but it was annoying the way that the political geography (cities, states etc.) of the US was pretty much the same, with even similar-sounding (but oddly-spelled) names (like Nebrasge instead of Nebraska). This was probably done as an expedient to help the reader understand the locations of things as the characters progress along their road trip, but it kept throwing me out of the story because it is so improbable. Other aspects of the culture that are old-school Norse don't make sense to me either, because this is supposed to be modern times. Modern day Scandinavians don't do this stuff, so why would modern North Americans just because they are descended from the Norse? I had to keep reminding myself just to think about it like a random alternate universe that just is, rather than an alternate history version of this universe. And given that in this world the Norse gods and trolls and such are real, the alternate universe is probably how Tessa Gratton intended this world to be interpreted.